21 Ways To Get Visual Ideas

When you’re stuck, in a rut or brain drained, it’s hard to be creative on demand. Here are some resources that may give you ideas and strategies for approaches to visual design.

You may find inspiration for designing an entire course, a title screen, a job aid or a way to make an abstract concept concrete. Please share your favorite inspiration resources in the Comments section below.

1. Graphic Design Portfolios

Look through the portfolios of designers and artists at these sites, which serve as platforms to showcase creative work and collections.

8. Poster Design

9. Stock Photo Sites

Search stock photo sites and image galleries for concepts that have you stumped. You don’t necessarily need to buy or use an image. This is a way you can see how others are visualizing a concept in ways you hadn’t imagined. It’s a good starting point for ideas to flourish.

13. Photography

14. Comics

Most people appreciate that storytelling through comics appeals to many learners. It’s also a more complex style than meets the eye. Here are some sites to check out the visual language and storytelling features of comics.

A couple more:
Good stuff, Connie! Thanks. Here are a couple more ideas:

1. A friend recently sent around an online quiz that was basically free-association, with the provision that answers be only nouns: “What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word idea…motivate…safety…, etc.” Afterward she said she was using the results to get ideas for visuals for an eLearning program.
2. I know you (Connie) share my interest in sketchnoting I’ve been working on teaching myself to sketchnote and find looking at other’s work to be really useful. It’s helping me to expand my “visual vocabulary” particularly in thinking of images to represent concepts. Google will get you lots of good examples; I especially like the entries for the “Sketchnotes Challenge”.

One of my all time favorites for design concepts has been The Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/), which started out as a competition to see how to effectively use CSS in web design. The creativity is astounding and has so many good ideas / concepts.